NEW YORK — Jim Boeheim has had his share of moments sitting behind a microphone, and lately, they haven’t portrayed him in a very positive light. Calling an ESPN commentator an "idiot." Telling a student newspaper reporter to "get your Pulitzer someplace else."

This? This was different. Boeheim came to a news conference after Syracuse defeated Seton Hall Wednesday afternoon and, instead of just answering a question about how he felt walking into Madison Square Garden for his final Big East Tournament, he opened a vein.

He talked about the beginning. He talked about the end. He talked about all the great figures in the league, about the rivalries between head coaches, about how their careers would never have ended in the Hall of Fame without each other. He talked for more than three minutes straight before he finished with four words: "It’s just been unbelievable."

"Your whole life has been spent in this league, and the last 31 years coming to this building, that’s a lot," Boeheim said, his right fist glued to his cheek as usual. "That’s a lot of memories, a lot of time.

"It’s just been such an amazing place," he said. "Unless you were here for all of them, you probably can’t grasp it, and I can’t explain it probably as well as I should, either."

In truth, it sounded a bit like a retirement speech, and it is hard not to wonder about that. There have been so many clues along the way that this could be it for the Syracuse coach, that 914 wins and counting — with 48 of those against Seton Hall, more than any other school — might be enough.

There was the bizarre tweet from the official university account, linking to a news story that he would be forced into retirement. There are the quotes from Boeheim himself, time and time again, about wishing he were on the golf course instead of figuring out this puzzle of a team.

He is 68 now. One longtime observer of his program figures the odds are 60-40 that he’s coming back. Another put it this way: "Even he doesn’t know." But the idea of conquering a new league, of invading ACC territory and playing a conference tournament in — yikes — Greensboro, N.C., seems daunting.

He insisted otherwise in the hallway outside the Knicks locker room, calling the ACC move a "tremendous opportunity" but he almost sounded like he was trying to talk himself into it.

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"It’s kind of like when you lose your job and you get a new job, you better be excited about it," he said. "You don’t have your old job anymore. You take the hand you’re dealt."

Take the hand you’re dealt. That sums up the conference realignment mess, which has left a few happy — take a bow, Rutgers — and many wondering what happened to the sport they loved.

Boeheim has made no secret that he falls in the latter category. Having those 900-plus wins allows him to rip the college presidents for getting college sports into this mess, even though his own university’s leadership helped drive the final nail into the Big East as we know it.

The "new" Big East, with the Catholic schools and their hand-picked partners, will be a good league. But they’re kidding themselves if they think they’ll generate the kind of crowds and buzz that Syracuse — that Boeheim — would bring to the Garden each March.

That’s why it’s so hard to imagine him in Durham, N.C., or Charlottesville, Va., next season. Much about the realignment feels wrong, but Boeheim was the final Big East fixture.

"I always tease him about being the Last Mohican," said Derrick Coleman, one of his greatest players. "Georgetown has been handed down. UConn, same thing. He loves it. He still loves teaching the game and he enjoys the competition."

Coleman said he asks Boeheim about his retirement plans but the coach "never gives you a straight answer." He didn’t Wednesday, either, joking when asked how long he planned to coach that he was going to "do it through tomorrow — for sure, tomorrow" but making no firm commitment beyond that.

He’ll probably be back for a 38th season. Coaches like Boeheim rarely can walk away from a good team, and Syracuse will bring back most of its core players from this team and adds one of the best recruiting classes in the country.

Still, it wouldn’t be a big surprise if he decided this was it. There is a symmetry to his career — all of it at Syracuse, all of it in the Big East — that he’ll lose when the Orange are playing on Tobacco Road.

"I’d have been happy if someone said, ‘Coach, you’re going to coach Syracuse and be in this league 10 years," Boeheim said. "We’ll give you 10 pretty good years, but that’s it. I’d have said, ‘Okay, I’ll take it.’ "

He got nearly four times that and, as nostalgic as he was about his last trip to this event, probably 400 times the memories. Now, as the landscape shapes, Syracuse can only wonder: How much more?